[Mb-hair] Kenny Ortega's a winner

[Reeeees at aol.com]

Oct 19 2004  |  Los Angeles Times

http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/segal/cl-et-choreography19oct19,2,2438885.st
ory 
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Winning moves
Artistry and back-patting highlight the American Choreography Awards.
By Lewis Segal , Times Staff Writer

If dancers are usually nothing more than sideshows or special effects in 
contemporary Hollywood, the annual American Choreography Awards allows them one 
long evening of delirious self-celebration and empowerment.

Divided into eight categories, the awards honor achievements in dance on 
camera and often confirm the worst about the dancers' status quo. But the event 
itself is more a carnival of the dispossessed than a conventional, 
celebrity-laden trophy giveaway.

As the nearly four-hour 10th edition confirmed Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre, 
the show releases the commercial dance world's deep sense of family loyalty. 
Consequently, the people responsible for sleazy, derivative dance numbers from 
the most forgettable film musicals or TV shows will frequently earn titanic 
ovations, compared with the polite approval granted the greatest concert-dance 
choreographers of our time (Paul Taylor, for example).

However, it's the concert-dance world that invariably contributes the most 
indelible live performances. On Sunday, these highlights included the 
phenomenally pliant Matthew Rushing in Alvin Ailey's "A Songfor You," the magically 
buoyant Marty Lawson in David Parsons' "Caught," and the daring, hyper-gymnastic 
members of Diavolo Dance Theatre in excerpts from "The Wheel."

Soulful ensemble choreography by Ka-Ron Brown Lehman, fierce and buoyant 
martial-arts gymnastics by Matt Mullins and the Talauegas' spectacular display of 
"krumping" (the re-Africanized, militarized successor to hip-hop) also 
punctuated the proceedings.

In speaking about the late Walt Disney during one of Sunday's special 
tributes, his brother Roy O. Disney called movies "a rhythmic medium" and drew 
attention to the Disney animators' focus on "the analysis of motion."

This focus linked Disney's dances to Parsons (whose "Caught" exploits the 
same perceptual quirk that allows us to see a series of still drawings as a 
moving image), to Mullins, to the krumping segment and to all the other 
choreographies (live or taped) that attempted something more purposeful in movement terms 
than just a pileup offlashy diversions. And it suddenly made you view Walt D. 
not only as a film innovator but also as an unlikely but genuine 
postmodernist.

Along with Walt Disney and Lehman, choreographer/director Kenny Ortega 
received one of the special (out-of-competition) awards — and would have deserved it 
had he done nothing else in his career but the bracingly politicized theater 
piece "Declare Yourself" at the very end of the program.

Co-directed by Ortega and Robert Egan, this collage of pithy spoken and 
danced viewpoints on millennial America provided a reality check for the whole 
event. If it jolted dancers out of their self-obsession long enough to send them 
to the polls on Nov. 2, Ortega and Egan ought to get a special public service 
award next year.


Honorees and Winners


Innovator: Walt Disney


Career achievement: Kenny Ortega


Educator award: Ka-Ron Brown Lehman


Feature film

Tie: Sylvain Chomet for "The Triplets of Belleville"

Dave Scott, Shane Sparks and Robert James Hoffman III for "You Got Served"


Short film

Édouard Lock for "Amelia," La La La Human Steps


Television special

Tie: Jason Samuels Smith for the 2003 Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon: 
Opening Number

Paul Taylor for "Acts of Ardor," PBS "Dance in America"


Television variety series

Monie Adamson for "Mad TV," "Regional Championships"


Episodic television 

Fred Tallaksen for "Malcolm in the Middle," "Jump Jump"


Music video

Hi-Hat, Anwar "Flii" Burton, Cicely Bradley and Olisa Thompson for Missy 
Elliott's "Pass Dat Dutch"


Commercials

Fatima Robinson for Target, "Changing of the Guards"


Fight choreography

Tie: George Marshall Ruge for "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the 
Black Pearl"

Keith Adams, Sonny Chiba, Quentin Tarantino and Yuen Woo-Ping for "Kill Bill 
Vol. 2" 
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